Intel's CES focus on phones, core, tablets

Next on stage was Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel’s PC Client Group to discuss the future of the company’s Core processor lineup. The near future, said Skaugen, would see Core processors become much lower power for “thinner, lighter, touch-based Ultrabook convertibles, detachables and tablets.”

Skaugen promised that the 4th generation of Intel processors – formerly known as “Haswell”—would show the biggest battery life gains over a previous generation in Intel’s history.

Skaugen had another surprise announcement to make regarding Intel’s exceeding of expectations, noting that despite having announced back in September 2012 that its 4th generation Core processor family would target 10 watts of design power, the firm had managed to wrangle that down to 7 watts, while delivering 5 times the performance of an Nvidia Tegra 3.

“We’ve literally gone from inches to millimeters on this ultra book journey,” said Skaugen noting that the entire market was looking towards thinner products.

Skaugen said there were currently over a dozen designs in development based on that philosophy, with the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11S and a future ultrabook detachable from Acer to be among the first to market this spring.

"The 4th generation Core processors are the first Intel chips built from the ground up with the Ultrabook in mind," Skaugen said, adding that the improvements would result in very thin, light machines still capable of performance intensive features like touch, voice and gesture controls.

To demonstrate the impact of the 4th generation Intel Core processor family, Skaugen showed off a new form factor ultrabook detachable reference design (codenamed "North Cape") which converted into a 10mm tablet and which, he claimed, could run on battery for up to 13 hours while docked.

Intel’s press conference also centered strongly on the new ways the firm believes consumers will interact with their computing devices, from free movements of their hands, fingers, face and voice as well as multi-user touch mode for surface tablet like devices.

Skaugen also demonstrated new adaptive AIO systems with batteries built into the screen which can be picked up and moved around the home or office as needed.

Finally, Intel announced a deal with cable companies Comcast and Bouygues Telecom (based in France) for on-demand pay TV content, with a home box containing an Intel Puma 6MG-based XG5 multi-screen video gateway. The firm said the collaboration with Comcast’s Xfinity service would allow content to be streamed to multiple screens in the home including Intel ultrabook devices, and Intel-based AIO PCs and tablets.

Right now this seems ridiculous. But watch out in several years. Those Xeon-Phi co-processor is a massive simplified x86 with SIMD/MIMD steroids running on a supercomputer ring-bus (like the CRAY's do).
That thing can be scaled for geez.. high performace GPU? How long before you see this incorporated into its line of CPU?
Again, instead of learning 2 machine language (CPU+GPU) you only need to learn 1. And use the same SDK.
Right now, ATI/NVIDIA/IT/ARM seems under-estimate Intel efforts. Let see this in a couple of years.

Intel SINGLE-core mobile CPU benchmark:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5770/lava-xolo-x900-review-the-first-intel-medfield-phone/4
Intel DUAL-cores mobile CPU benchmark:
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Intel-Atom-powered-Lenovo-IdeaPhone-K900-benchmarks-are-astronomical_id38597
Compare to what? Even Quad-cores ARM?
Many have dismissed Intel when it wants to make "mobile" processor. Who's laughing now??
And Intel want to make this Atom's line as it's main line (even for micro server clusters). And it will gain out-of-order executions logic. And of course more cores.
Who should be worried? Intel or ARM?

Profit-motive is strong for any business let alone fabless or not. Intel has had many tries at the mobile market and they are certainly serious about it and have deep pockets. But that does not guarantee success. It remains to be seen if the ultra-mobile space will accept generic silicon.
With all the resources, fab advantage, deep pockets and the number of years they have been at this to only show their designs with companies like Lava and Safaricom says a lot about the (lack of) traction they are seeing.

I wish Intel success in whatever endeavor they pursue. They create and sustain so many jobs for the middle class Americans. Most other fabless companies care so much about profit that they outsource jobs to most Asian companies.

Intel has huge advantages in terms of process technology, Mfg capacity, software and design teams, They can turn around and verify designs much faster than Fabless companies if they put their business mind on it,. If they just focus on it as a side business they will not be sucessful
Samsung has similar capabilities like Intel, it would be a good competition.
But Intel can beat Fabless if they put their mind to it.

Intel will be finally be in the smartphone arena, but 500 million units by 2015 would be 40%-50% of the WW market, depending on which forecast you use. This would be a significant feat for any company, but extremely difficult to achieve when the leading smartphone vendors are developing chips in-house and you are competing against strong industry incumbents.